It’s Friday, July 24. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: The Saudis are going nuclear. History isn’t dead. Zohran Mamdani’s millionaire working-class comrades. The history of the Navy SEALs. And more.
But first: What the Trump administration gets right about sex.
Ask the millennial woman in your life: What’s the craziest thing you were taught in sex ed?
Having been born in 1995, I was fortunately informed that I could get pregnant from sitting in a hot tub 24 hours after a guy—it could be a man I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW and he could be OLD and CREEPY—contaminated it.
At the time, the culture was reeling from the aftermath of the AIDS epidemic and spiraling from a spike in teen pregnancies. In the first year of the ’90s, there were a million of them in the U.S. Last year there were about 125,000. Teenagers just aren’t having that much sex anymore, for reasons we’ve explored plenty of times in these pages.
So you might think it’d be logical, and uncontroversial, for our Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), charged with helping Americans flourish, to stop putting quite so many tax dollars into preventing teen pregnancy. The money’s probably better spent elsewhere.
And yet, when it was reported this week that HHS was doing just that, sworn enemies of the administration saw not a sensible fiscal decision but a sinister plot to promote the idea that a woman’s womb must, at the earliest opportunity, be yoked into generating fresh new American citizens.
In today’s essay, Kat Rosenfield cuts through the hysteria and argues that the new guidelines for sex ed are a course correction designed for the challenges actually facing teenagers right now, in a world where girls aren’t taught what the contraceptive pill actually does and boys aren’t taught how porn might affect their minds and bodies.
May the next generation of young women be saved from believing that a hot tub can ruin their lives.
—Freya Sanders
Saudi Arabia will be permitted to stand up a civilian nuclear program, the Trump administration announced on Wednesday—a marked shift in U.S. policy in the Middle East. President Donald Trump cautioned on Thursday that the deal does not include enrichment for weapons use, but it represents a big gamble in an already tenuous region. Zineb Riboua makes sense of the deal and what it could mean for the balance of power in the Gulf and the broader Middle East.
Last week, Niall Ferguson wrote that he felt his life’s work as a historian was a failure. But Ferguson hasn’t failed as a historian, writes Omar Mohammed, because the goal of history isn’t to beat the algorithms, but to be the first authors of history and record keepers—something Omar had to do in his home city of Mosul, Iraq, after the Islamic State took over. “The one territory [the Islamic State] could not annex was the record,” Omar writes.
What is considered “working class”? Ask a dozen people and you’re likely to get a dozen answers. But few will say that somebody who earns a million dollars a year is considered “working class”. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani thinks so. His admission says a lot about his conception of that term. Rob Henderson unpacks what Mamdani’s expansive definition of the working class says about his politics and where the mayor actually sits on conflicts between the classes.
The Navy SEALs are arguably the most famous military unit in the entire world. But it hasn’t always been this way. The story of the SEALs goes back to World War II, and Ben Milligan, a former Navy SEAL himself, tells it in full in his new book on the history of the Navy SEALs. He joins Aaron MacLean on the newest “School of War” podcast to discuss how the “Frogmen” became America’s most lethal and mysterious fighting force.
Reading and sharing The Free Press is the best way to show your support for our mission—but wearing FP swag might be a close second. Check out our three new merchandise items, which are available for a limited time and perfect for the summer, especially if you’re a TGIF or Tough Love with Abigail Shrier fan. And if you’re still feeling grateful for America’s 250th, grab some limited-edition A250 merch—there’s not much left!
Editors’ Picks
New York mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to make Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a criminal in the eyes of the city, and Douglas Murray argues that the mayor’s ire extends way beyond one man. In Mamdani’s latest speech, Murray says, the mayor rehearses a long list of lies about all of Israel: “genocide,” “maiming of children,” and more. His campaign against Netanyahu is only the latest step in the left’s recent hard turn against the Jewish state.
Abolishing prisons. Ending the Supreme Court. No more private rental market. We know the policies of the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization that will send several favored candidates into Congress next year. But what drives their radical vision? This week we got an answer from Jake Altman, a former member of the group. He says their goal is nothing less than the destruction of the American way of life.
#MeToo is back—and it has a new face. Olivia Reingold profiled Cheyenne Hunt, a 29-year-old lawyer-turned-progressive-influencer who helped bring down Senate candidate Graham Platner and forced Representative Eric Swalwell out of Congress and the California governor’s race after allegations of sexual misconduct. Now, with a new nonprofit targeting powerful men, Hunt says she’s “just getting started.”
Those who live by brutality deserve to meet a brutal end. The ancient Greeks believed this, and in a review of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster The Odyssey, Spencer Klavan praises the director for not shying away from that truth. Amid the sea of moral relativism that defines so many modern works, audiences can benefit from a film that confidently portrays the meting out of rough justice in the epic’s famous final act.
"Those who live by brutality deserve to meet a brutal end."
I remember the thrill I felt upon my first reading of The Odyssey when one by one the suitors are killed with the bow and arrows they defiled, in the home they desecrated. A brutal end deserved!
The ancient code of hospitality works both ways: You may not bring harm to a stranger in your house, and as a guest you must not disrespect your host. The suitors were, to put it mildly, really bad "guests."
Even so, the old servant is chastised when she raises her hands to crow over the suitors' deaths; Odysseus tells her it's unseemly. And so it is.
Less happily, both Polyphemus, who eats his guests, and Odysseus who blinds his "host," get comeuppances.
I almost never go to movies and lately have made exceptions only for Iranian and Israeli films. This new "Odyssey" might be worth a try notwithstanding this and that sure to annoy me.
“Why Mamdani thinks millionaires are working class.” Because Mamdani is a nepo baby, just like all the rest of the “democratic” socialist leaders.
Like Thomas Sowell said, “The offspring of privilege have dominated the leadership of Marxist movements from the days of Marx and Engels through Lenin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and their lesser counterparts around the world and down through history. The sheer reiteration of the "working class" theme in Marxism has drowned out this plain fact.”
So, please Mess with the Zohran: https://lizlasorte.substack.com/p/please-mess-with-the-zohran?r=76q58